Intentional Actions and the Meaning of Object: A Reply to Richard McCormick

INTENTIONAL ACTIONS AND THE MEANING OF OBJECT: A REPLY TO RICHARD McCORMICK MARTIN RHONHEIMER Roman Athenaeum of the Holy Cross Rome, Italy I N HIS ARTICLE, " Some Early Reactions to Veritatis Splendor," 1 Richard McCormick discusses my article on Veritatis Splendor and its teaching about intrinsically evil acts.2 He challenges my defence of the encyclical's views and poses some concrete questions for me. At the same time, McCormick complains once more about what he calls the encyclical's misrepresentation of the proportionalists' views, as well as about a general misunderstanding on the part of critics of what proportionalism , consequentialism, and their teleological approach are really about. To begin with, I find it somewhat surprising that McCormick presents intentional understanding of human acts and their objects as something discovered by proportionalists. By this he obscures the fact that most critics of proportionalism, consequentialism , and so-called " teleological ethics " (I will not further distinguish these different labels) work with what is precisely an intentional conception of moral objects.3 For example, my own 1 Theological Studies 55 (1994): 481-506; see 500-502; 504. 2 Martin Rhonheimer, " ' Intrinsically Evil Acts' and the Moral Viewpoint: Clarifying a Central Teaching of Veritatis Splendor," The Thomist 58 (1994) : 1-39. 3 There may be some exceptions, for example, Russell Rittinger; see his article, "The Pope and the Theorists," Crisis 11 (December 1993) : 31-36. G. E. M. Anscombe, one of the first and most incisive critics of consequentialism , attacked it on the grounds of an intentional concept of action, developed in her famous study Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957; 2nd ed. 1963). Cf. Anscombe, Contraception and Chastity (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1975). 279 280 MARTIN RHONHEIMER position, situated in the context of virtue ethics,4 is one in which an intentional conception action plays a crucial role. McCormick seems to evade this level of argument, however, and in this way appears to beg the question about one of the central issues in the debate. At the same, it is not entirely surprising that McCormick had some difficulty in dealing with the central point of my argument (and of similar arguments),5 because his methodology is so entangled in the categories of the strongly legalistic and casuistic manual tradition.6 In my article, I explicitly dealt with the difficulty of understanding a virtue and first-person-centered view from the perspective of the manual tradition: It will, however, never be possible to render intelligible this moral methodology on the grounds of an ethic which from the beginning is concerned with justifying " moral norms." This is so because in such an approach the distinction between " object" and further intentions necessarily drops out of view. The only thing which a norm ethic can produce in the way of an action theory are the particular " occurrences " ("actions ") on the one hand, and the consequences 4 See Martin Rhonheimer, "'Ethics of Narms' and the Lost Virtues. Searching the Roots of the Crisis of Ethical Reasoning," Anthropotes IX, 2 (1993) : 231-243; La prospettiva della morale. Fondamenti dell'etica philosophica (Rome: Armando, 1994) ; Praktische Vernunft und Verniinftigkeit der Praxis. Handlungstheorie bei Thomas van Aquin in ihrer Entstehimg aus dem Problemlwntext der aristotelischen Ethik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994). Contrary to the impression which McCormick gives in his article, I do not share the Grisez-Finnis theory about basic goods and practical reason, nor do I argue on its grounds, in spite of many important common views. 5 See William E. May, Moral Absolutes. Catholic Tradition, Citrrent Trends, and the Truth (Milwaukee, Wisc: Marquette University Press, 1989) ; John Finnis, Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991); Alasdair Macintyre, "How Can We Learn What Veritatis Splendor Has To Teach?" The Thomist 58 (1994) : 171-195. See also Robert P. George's and Hadley's Arkes's contributions to " The Splendor of Truth: A Symposium," published in First Things (January 1994) and rather unfairly criticized in McCormick's article. 6 This is also the case with Bruno Schuller and his disciples; see the recent paper by Werner Wolbert, " Die 'in sich schlechten' Handlungen und der Konsequentialismus," M oraltheologie im Abseitsf Antwort auf die Enzyklika...